


AFTERWARDS.

by ellie_elle



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2554883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellie_elle/pseuds/ellie_elle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce has anger management issues, and Tony has weirdness issues. They balance each other out.<br/>Or, 5 times Tony wasn't persuasive enough, and 1 time he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	AFTERWARDS.

1.

Tony learned that day that fuming and glaring at Principal Fury for two-and-a-half hours straight could, in fact, be quite exhausting, although he had figured even before that detentions weren’t exactly fun to begin with.

But Fury had obviously learned how to punish him, because this time he didn’t give him anything to do, and Tony goddamn _needed_ something to _do,_ and so now he had to sit there on the sofa across from the Principal’s desk and die bit by bit with each passing minute.

After a while, he settled for “May I go to the restroom, sir?” annoyed at himself for not coming up with something more original or at least less predictable, but he really was at the end of his rope, and it would do – well, it would have to do.

\-- Taken that it worked. And he didn’t know if it would, because Fury just glared at him and didn’t say anything while Tony did his best to hold his gaze. Once it got too awkward, Tony decided to take that as a yes, since Fury didn’t technically say _no,_ so he got up and went for the door, inadvertently looking like he was trying to sneak away. Fury’s eye followed him.

“I’ll know it if you try to run away,” Fury said.

“I… won’t?” Tony reassured him cautiously, one foot already through the door.

“I think so, too.” “Great, so, uh… we’re on the same page… Ha. Bye --–well, for now, that i--”

“Just get out.”

“Cool,” Tony quipped and skipped out of the room, closing the door behind him as quickly as he possibly could.

He whispered “Thank God,” -- or at least he thought he whispered it, cause the next thing he heard was Fury’s voice coming through the door:

“--I heard that.”

“Shit.”

“I heard that, too.”

“Uh… I didn’t mean it like that?”

“Just get to the goddamn toilet, Stark.”

And when Tony did get to the restroom, the first thing he saw was a broken urinal on the floor, and the second thing he saw was some guy, curled in a ball in the corner of the room and crying and looking at Tony in shock – which Tony felt he was doing as well, himself.

The boy sniffed and quickly wiped his eyes with his sleeve. He seemed to try to press himself even further back into the wall.

“Dude,” Tony said, alternating between looking at the shreds of porcelain on the floor and whoever that guy was in the corner, “what happened here?”

The boy didn’t reply, and instead hid his face behind his knees, probably thinking that Tony would leave him alone if he refused to communicate.

“Hey,” Tony said, trying to be gentle without knowing how to do so, “you ok?” He shifted uncomfortably and hoped he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

He heard the boy say “Yeah,” into his knees.

“Nobody, like… did anything to y--”

“I did that,” the boy said.

“Oh.” There was an awkward silence after that. The boy stared at Tony, trying to see his reaction, while Tony just stared at the debris.

“What makes a guy think, you know, I’m gonna… I’m just gonna fuck this urinal up, man. Hm?”

The boy hesitated for a moment before replying. “Well, said… uh, guy and his girlfriend broke up.”

“Oh,” Tony chewed on his lip. The entire thing just got even more awkward, and he still didn’t know how to handle it. “Uh. I know how… that is. Mine broke up with me last week. I was angry, t--”

“I actually broke up with her.”

“Oh. Uh. Okay. Yeah…… Yeah, I get it.” He didn’t get it.

The boy stood up. “I’m gonna go,” he said and Tony didn’t really dare say or ask anything else.

“Cool. Yeah. See you round… um… man,” he rambled as the boy left. He didn’t know what the hell just happened.

 

2.

One week later, Tony was in detention again, and would stay there for another seventy-five minutes.

He was debating napping – which he assumed was forbidden, but he was thinking he could try, and then act as if he accidentally drifted off in case Fury caught him, and the more he thought about it, the better his plan sounded.

He had only closed his eyes when another student was brought to Fury’s office.

And it turned out it was that guy.

And, as much as Tony could understand from the conversation, it also turned out that his name was Bruce Banner and that he had just thrown a _book_ at a _teacher_.

_Goddamn,_ Tony thought, and figured that everyone, including himself, would – and possibly should – be freaking terrified of someone like Bruce, knowing he: a. demolished a urinal, and b. attempted to demolish a person’s face.

Only somehow, Tony found out he was, in fact, kind of interested in Bruce, which he immediately knew could be a bad thing, but didn’t really care at the moment.

The thing was, what really weirded him out was how, when Bruce came in through the door, he looked like he didn’t even know where he was. He seemed out of it, as if he had only just woken up. And now, as Tony watched him listen to Fury, he seemed to have come to and looked… just genuinely ashamed and crushed. There was no rebellion in him – he just looked really, really dejected.

And Tony really wanted to know what the hell was up with that.

When Fury was done with Bruce, he sent him to sit next to Tony. Then he left to a meeting, but reassured them that his assistant Coulson would be there shortly, so they better not try any “funny business”, to which they both gave vague signs of agreement.

Once they were alone, Tony cleared his throat. “I thought you got caught for the urinal thing,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk,” Bruce replied moodily.

Tony raised his hands and said, “Sorry,” but then kept on talking: “You know, since I now know your name, it’s only fair that you know my name, which is Tony Stark,” he said and extended his hands.

Bruce eyed it, then he eyed Tony, and Tony thought he was going to get dissed again, but then Bruce just kinda… out of nowhere— Bruce started crying.

And Tony, he didn’t know where that was coming from – he was just like “Whoa! Uh…! Hey—--uh…” and he was gonna put his hands on Bruce’s shoulders, but Bruce scooted away from him, so he didn’t do it, and then he looked around the room, as if that was gonna help him, before remembering to dig through his backpack and give Bruce some tissues.

He thought about whether he should say something, but opted not to, because he figured that if he was in Bruce’s place, he wouldn’t want some random guy telling him random stuff. So he kept his mouth shut while Bruce tried to compose himself.

It took a while, but when Bruce calmed down, he looked at Tony and said: “Seriously?” to which Tony didn’t know how to reply.

“Seriously what?”

“You saw and heard how fucked up I am, and you still want to… introduce yourself to me?”

Tony lit up at that, “Hey, I was just thinking the same thing!” Bruce kind of frowned at that, but let Tony continue: “You know, I… well, screw it, I do. Also, the correct term is ‘befriend someone’…”

“I’m not sure about that, cause it sounds… outdated.”

“God, Mr. Know-it-all, it was the first word to come to my mind, whatever okay?”

“Okay?” Bruce said.

“So you wanna be friends or not?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said.

“Knowing me is always a good idea. Plus, my reflexes are great, in case you throw random stuff at me.”

Bruce looked torn between laughing and crying again, and Tony hoped he would do the former, but in the end he did neither.

“All right,” he said, partly reluctantly, and partly as if he was giving up. “I am honored to befriend you, Mr Stark,” he said, smirking only a little.

“…Are you mocking me?”

“…No?”

“…Whatever.”

 

3.

“Fuck. Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh fuck.”

Tony agreed. He was standing in the middle of the mess that was now his room, thinking about how him cleaning it up earlier this afternoon to make it look presentable for Bruce was now rendered completely pointless.

Bruce retreated to cower in the corner of Tony’s room, and Tony wondered if that was something he did instinctively.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said, his voice high-pitched, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Tony looked at his broken computer, overthrown table, destroyed set of CDs, scattered books, ripped sheets and torn pillow, broken guitar and crashed lamp, and said: “I think we need to have a talk.”

Bruce was hiding his face behind his hands, “I’ll go. You probably don’t want me here anymore. I’m just gonna go,” he said and tried to stand up, but stumbled halfway through, so he just continued crawling to the door.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Tony called, crouching next to him and stopping him in his tracks, “you don’t look… you… you’ve gotta take a break, you can’t even stand up. C’mon,” he said and helped him over to the bed.

“I’m sorry I messed up. I messed up. God, I just… I fucked it up,” Bruce kept on saying, as if that was literally the only thing going through his mind at the moment.

“That’s… well… I’m rich, so…”

“You hate me. You hate me. You’ve gotta just… hate me.”

“…I don’t, really.”

Bruce thought he was gonna lose his sanity. He looked at what he did to the room, then he looked back at Tony, then back at the room and back at Tony, and he just… he couldn’t take it. “I have anger management issues,” he told Tony.

Tony nodded, “I kinda gathered that.”

“You knew!?” Bruce asked, frowning, “I mean, you really, actually, consciously knew that?”

Tony thought about it. “…Yeah?”

“Then why did… God. You see what that did to you? What I did to you?”

“Uh, well, actually you did it to my room, and not to me… per se.”

“Per se? Per se?! Wait, what, God – I… You are insane!” Bruce yelled, as if he only just now realized it, “You… why are you taking all of my shit so calmly?!”

Tony was kind of taken aback by that question. “Well… I… I don’t know,” he paused, thinking about it, “it’s just. There’s this thing that you’ve got going on with your… with yourself…”

“I’m a crazy violent motherfucker?”

“Besides that, I mean. Uh… but I can’t tell you what. I just, you know, when I see you I think to myself ‘I want to talk to this guy and see what he thinks, how he thinks, and just, I want to kinda… just get to know him. And I don’t know why. I keep thinking about it and it’s just, I don’t know why you are so different from everyone else to me. I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s a fucking great reason you've got there, Tony,” Bruce said, and it was only then that Tony realized that Bruce had shifted into a fetal position with his back turned to Tony.

Tony was silent for a moment, and he felt himself getting frustrated. “You know what,” he said after a moment, with so much vehemence in his voice it could almost be considered yelling, “asshole, it’s a good reason for me! Cause I’m the one who’s feeling it! And I just know. I feel it, okay? I feel like that. And it makes me feel… like… positive emotions! Your existence, I mean – like, you are cool to me! So screw you, but that’s a great reason for me, okay?!”

Bruce was trembling. “Fuck Tony. Fuck. You’re such a fucker.”

“What the fuck, dude?”

“…One… does not simply… say nice things to...” Tony then got it.

“Hey,” he said softly, “Then one is the real asshole in that situation.”

Bruce trembled harder.

“…I thought that was gonna sound epic, but it came out awkward as hell,” Tony continued, “Oh whate---“

He shut up when Bruce threw himself onto him, latched onto his shirt and pushed Tony down on the bed, so that he could lie down next to him.

Bruce was stiff at first, and Tony was acutely aware of that. He tried rubbing his back a little to help him relax, and even though it was awkward, it helped.

Bruce drifted off after a while. “Sorry I soaked your cool shirt,” was the last thing he said before going under. Maybe he heard Tony laugh at that, and maybe he didn’t.

 

4.

The night Bruce punched a guy by the pool at Tony’s Christmas party, he didn’t really want to talk to Tony, and it made Tony crazy uncomfortable.

The first thing Tony noticed after returning to his room was that Bruce was still sitting on the bed, wet and shivering ten minutes after Tony had told him to dry himself and change his clothes. Tony was going to say something, but somehow that didn’t fit with the entire atmosphere Bruce had set up, so instead, he figured he would make him do it himself.

He took some clean clothes out of his closet, and then he took Bruce by the hand and let him into the bathroom. Bruce changed and blow-dried his hair while Tony waited for him outside.

The first thing Tony noticed when Bruce came out was how funny Bruce looked in Tony’s clothes, which were too big for him, and how wild his hair was, curly and all over the place.

They stood there in the hallway for a couple of moments.

“Tony?” Bruce said, and it was so soft it made Tony feel shy to hear his name said so delicately, and he just looked at Bruce and then he saw him take a few steps to close the distance between the two of them and then Bruce kissed him, halfway between soft and forceful, and Tony’s hands instinctively went around him to hold him as he kissed back. Bruce broke off the kiss and continued trailing kisses down Tony’s neck, and Tony had to start rubbing against him, and Bruce rubbed against him, too.

“Fuck. That’s hot,” Tony said, but Bruce didn’t reply, and whether he didn’t want to, or was just too focused on other things, Tony didn’t know.

Bruce was kissing Tony like his was the first body he could explore – not exactly shy, and not really confident either, but definitely curious, and he seemed to be enjoying roaming his mouth and hands over Tony.

At one point, his hands went up to scratch Tony’s scalp and neck, and that combined with everything else just made Tony lose it. “Ok, that’s it. You’re getting some tonight,” Tony grunted out while taking off Bruce’s pants and underwear and then taking Bruce’s cock in his hands.

Bruce’s breath hitched in his throat, and Tony looked at him. Bruce’s eyelids were fluttering and he was mouthing oh god and Tony could feel Bruce wanted to thrust into his hands, but for some reason he wouldn't let himself.

He kissed the delicate skin below Bruce’s ear. “Shhhh,” he soothed, “It’s ok. ‘S ok. I’m here.”

Bruce’s breath hitched in his chest again. He cleared his throat. “You stay there and I’ll dest--.”

“Shut up. I’m gonna make you feel good, but you’ve got to let yourself feel good.”

“…I don’t know how to do that, Tony.”

“I’ll help you.”

 

5.

The time Bruce ended up punching Tony in the face was the first time Tony couldn’t call after him, because he was shocked and sprawled on the floor and his vision blurry and nose bleeding, and by the time he composed himself, Bruce had gone away.

Tony kind of cried. It was probably cause of the pain, though.

 

\+ 1.

Tony didn’t see or hear from Bruce for three days after that, and that was greatly upsetting for him, because it was as if Bruce had just disappeared from the face of the Earth, and Tony wanted to know where the hell he was, because not knowing it just stressed him out a whole lot.

Then one Thursday, he simply found Bruce in the library, sitting in his usual spot and reading his usual book, looking and acting just like he usually did, and it was all just so goddamn usual that it almost made Tony want to cry.

Tony approached Bruce the moment he spotted him, as if he thought Bruce might dissipate into thin air if he didn’t hurry up.

He tried to inconspicuously take a seat next to Bruce, but that was impossible, because Bruce was more than acutely aware of two things: anyone less than ten feet away from him, and Tony; and now Tony was less than ten feet away from him. Bruce threw a glance at Tony, and immediately went back to reading. He looked annoyed, but not surprised as he scooted away from Tony.

“Dude,” Tony whispered, “we gotta talk.”

Bruce ignored him at all costs.

“We gotta talk,” Tony repeated, and failed again.

“Talk,” he insisted, “We have to talk. I have to talk to you. Talking. Talk. But we can’t talk in the library, so we gotta get out of here. Cause we gotta talk, you know. Talk? We have to talk, man – dude, we have to…”

He shut up when Bruce almost overturned the table by how forcefully and abruptly he stood up. Tony watched him leave before blinking, and then following Bruce outside. Bruce was going for the restrooms and Tony rolled his eyes.

Once they were there and alone, Bruce spoke up. “I thought it would be nice to bring this full circle.”

“…You want to break another toilet?”

“We met here, and now we’re gonna drift apart here,” Bruce explained, and Tony sighed.

“You are such an idiot,” he told Bruce.

“But I’ll let you say whatever it is you feel obligated to say before we never talk to each other again.”

Tony wanted to shake and slap and yell at him, but instead he twisted his foot awkwardly on the floor. “Uh, you know,” he began, “friendships don’t really work that way.”

“Because our friendship is the most usual one there is,” Bruce countered.

Tony frowned. “Well… why wouldn’t it be?”

“You know why, T—“

“No, no, I don’t know why. I mean, you’re a person, and I’m a person, too, and we hang out, and that equals friendship!”Tony’s voice was rising in volume.

“You know, it really pisses me off that you don’t want to get it.”

“It pisses _me_ off that _you_ don't want to get it!”

“Goddamnit, Tony! I hit you! You should… God… don’t you have a sense for self-preservation or something?”

“I have a sense for not running away from a friend that needs help at the first sight of trouble, okay?”

“Dude… what?!”

“And it’s not like I wasn’t angry at you, and in case you didn't notice, I yelled at you, too, and I’m sorry, but I was having a bad day, and just… Also, for the record, don’t criticize my programming skills ever again.”

“I don’t plan on having a chance to.”

“You are a coward! Jesus Christ, it’s not like I’ve never been punched before, it’s no big d---”

In the next moment, Tony found himself pinned to the wall, and Bruce was holding him up by his shirt. “I am a monster! I am a self-hating bastard! And you have to stay the fuck away! Don’t you get it?” he shook Tony roughly.

“No,” Tony replied, and then suddenly he was a heap on the floor, watching Bruce stagger away from him.

“Fuck – Fuck. Fuck!” Bruce yelled, screamed, and when he looked back at Tony, he didn’t seem to see him. He didn’t seem to recognize him. He didn’t even seem to be aware of where he was, and Tony was worried to death.

Bruce’s chest heaved a few times as he took large gulps of air, before wailing again and punching a wall. Then he turned around, disoriented, and looking for something else to break. “Goddamnit!”

“Not the urinal, dude, they just replaced it…”

And then Bruce’s attention was on Tony, and Bruce watched him like he was going to end him.

“Shut,” he pointed his finger at Tony as he approached him slowly and ominously, “The fuck. Up.”

“And if I don’t?” Bruce stopped in his tracks, looking like he was about to explode or faint, or both.

“Bruce. Bruce. Do you know who I am?” Bruce was barely breathing as he stared at Tony and frowned, and Tony --- oh god, Bruce actually didn’t recognize Tony, and Tony’s chest hurt.

“Bruce?” Tony called softly, “Hey, it’s okay. Take a deep breath.”

Bruce didn’t do it. He seemed to be almost paralyzed. “Fuck,” he sobbed.

“Hey,” Tony tried again, standing up.

“Just take a deep breath. Trust me, you’re gonna feel better.”

And then Bruce managed to do so, and his body shook as he did, and then when his lungs were full of air once again, he said “Fuck. Tony,” and then he collapsed to his knees.

Tony caught him just in time to soften his fall, and Bruce latched onto him. “God, Tony. God,” Bruce said and lay down so that his head was on Tony’s lap. “We’re both such idiots.”

Tony smirked. “Means we gotta stick together.”

“How?”

“Well… we just… stick together?”

“Oh. Ok.”

They were silent for a few minutes. “What do we do now?” Bruce asked.

“Now like ‘now’ or like ‘right now’?”

“I mean… when I lose my shit.”

“Then,” Tony said, confident, “we look after each other.”


End file.
